Tightass wakes up to an empty hut, so he goes looking for Wakka. He’s at the temple. Tightass wonders what’s going on. “The summoner hasn’t returned from the trial,” Wakka tells him. Tightass makes a wanky “huh?” sound. “Well, apprentice summoner, really,” Wakka continues. Tightass makes yet another wanky “huh?” sound. This extreme wankiness triggers some more exposition. Wakka explains about the “Cloister of Trials”, a room where the apprentice summoner prays and, if successful, becomes an actual summoner. I don’t see how summoning is something you can be an apprentice at. Seems to me that you either summon or you don’t, but what the hell do I know? “So someone is in there somewhere and they haven’t come back out,” Tightass says, very noticeably avoiding any gender-specific pronouns.
Tightass expresses concern, since the apprentice summoner has been in there for a day, and, according to Wakka, the Cloister of Trials can be dangerous. He wants to help, and wonders why Wakka hasn’t done so. “There’s already guardians in there. Besides, it’s forbidden,” he responds. Tightass freaks out and charges up the stairs to the main chamber. He’s trying to be all heroic. The priest tries to stop him, saying, “The precepts must be obeyed.” “Like I care!” Tightass wanks. He runs into the main chamber. Everyone makes shocked noises. We’re supposed to think Tightass is a big rebel stud. Or something. Whatever, he’s a wanker.
The screen goes black. You know what that means. Wankese. “Maybe….this wasn’t such a good idea after all.” Gee, ya think? The screen comes up again, and there’s a little explanation of the next part, creatively entitled “The Cloister of Trials”. Basically, it’s a puzzle involving putting spheres into sphere-shaped recesses and opening the path to the Chamber of the Fayth, whatever that may be. There’s glowy things and glyphs and weird-ass music. I don’t have to recap this part. And, contrary to some people’s negative opinions of the Cloister of Trials, I never had a single problem. Maybe I’m just the Cloister of Trials God. Or maybe I just need to get out more.
As soon as Tightass finishes the puzzle and reaches the end of the path, Wakka approaches him. He did a total Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade deal where he let Tightass do all the puzzle-solving and just followed him. Only the Cloister of Trials doesn’t have anything remotely deadly in it. Unless you trip over a sphere and crack your head open.
Might as well, since you’ve already grabbed him from behind numerous times and smacked his ass.
Wakka wants to know what the hell Tightass is doing. “Only summoners, apprentice summoners, and their guardians can enter here,” Wakka says. He tells Tightass that he, Wakka, is a guardian. I think this was supposed to be a big revelation moment because they carefully avoided any overt mention of Wakka being a guardian. He only briefly mentioned his “new job” earlier, giving no information about it, even though he gave explicit details about the whole rest of his life. His earlier line about there already being guardians in the chamber made it sound like he wasn’t one of them. So yeah, we’re supposed to be all shocked and stuff except for one thing – we don’t know what the fuck a guardian is.
So Tightass asks about guardians, but Wakka doesn’t tell him just yet. The platform that they’re standing on turns all glowy and decorated and starts descending. Tightass acts like he’s never been on anything remotely resembling an elevator and makes wanky surprised noises. Can he shut up for two seconds, please? Wakka takes this opportunity to explain what a guardian is. “Summoners go on a pilgrimage to pray at every temple in Spira. Guardians protect them.” So now we know.
Wakka informs Tightass that there are two guardians in the chamber, and that one of them is always pissed, and the other unreadable. I’m just curious how Wakka got out of guardian duty at this ever-so-important point where an apprentice summoner becomes a summoner. Is blitzball really that important? He didn’t seem all that concerned about this apprentice summoner when he was pestering Tightass to join his blitzball team. Then again, he’s totally baked – he probably didn’t even remember that the apprentice summoner even existed until the priest came to his hut earlier.
In the chamber, a goth-looking woman with the most low-cut dress and enormous breasts ever demands to know what Wakka is doing there. “Didn’t think we’d be able to handle it?” In other words, she just didn’t want to be stuck there with Wakka and his stoned ass for the better part of a day. The other guardian is a big blue humanoid lion guy who says nothing. The chick is the one that’s always pissy, according to Wakka. Well, I would be, too, if I had to wear a dress with 30 belts on the front and my boobs hanging out the top while sitting on a cold stone floor in a small chamber with a big blue lion for a day. Tightass asks if the summoner is okay. “Who are you?” demands the chick. We never hear his answer. Do you recognize the pattern here? Tightass never tells his name to anyone, ever. No one ever calls him by name. Sure, you could attribute it to the fact that, since the game is voice-acted, they couldn’t account for every single possible name that people could enter in for him, and so they just never say his name at all. However, my explanation is that no one really gives enough of a shit about him to bother to learn his name, or to call him anything but “Hey, you”.
At the other side of the chamber is a staircase leading up to an Important-looking Door. Everyone stares at it, as the camera does all these fancy angles. Okay, just get on with it. Suddenly the door opens, and we go into FMV mode. ::gasp:: The summoner is a hot young woman! I didn’t see that coming at all! And it’s the kimono girl from the opening scene of the game! So once again, we’re supposed to be all surprised and stuff.
Reminds me of the puffer fish at the zoo.
The game designers said, “Hey, let’s spend an inordinate amount of time showing how cool we can make hair look!” and so we get to see her shaking her hair around for about five minutes. It’s like a damn shampoo commercial. She staggers to the stairs, and then stumbles and falls. Whose brilliant idea was it to put stairs right outside the Chamber of the Fayth anyway? Idiots. Tightass runs forward to catch her, because she’s supposed to be the wussy female in need of help and he’s the hero, but the game designers trick us, and blue lion guy catches her instead. I laugh at Tightass. The apprentice summoner chick stands up by herself (in your face, Rinoa!) flips her hair around some more, and announces that she’s become a summoner. The voice actress falls under the same trying-to-match-words-with-mouth-movements affliction, so summoner chick sounds slightly mentally challenged.
The screen goes black. I steel myself for the inevitable Wankese, but there is none. I breathe a sigh of relief. Back in the main area of the temple, a crowd has gathered. The camera does a not-so-subtle close-up on the statue of High Summoner Braska. I wonder if this will have any significance. As summoner chick and the others emerge into the main chamber, Tightass slips into Wankese. Damn! So close! I won’t let my guard down next time. “Man, was I surprised. And here I was thinking summoners were all old geezers.”
Okay, now that we have all the information, I am going to rant about what I find wrong with this whole scene. The game designers were trying to “fool” us into thinking that the summoner would be some old guy, so we could be all surprised, just like Tightass, when we find out that she’s a hot young chick. To accomplish this, they had to write it so that Tightass would not find out summoner chick’s true gender until the big FMV scene. So they had to a) make sure no one familiar with the apprentice summoner, including Wakka, used any gender-specific pronouns, and b) make sure that Tightass also did not vocalize his assumption that the apprentice summoner was an old guy around any of the people familiar with her, because they would have corrected him. So we get such grammatically incorrect lines as “So someone is in there somewhere and they haven’t come back out”. People just don’t talk like that — most of the time they either assume a gender or say “he or she”. Or at least Wakka would have said “she” at some point.
Geez, would you just get it on already?
The priest conveniently forgives Tightass for being an idiot and tells him to go to the village square. So he does. When he gets to the bottom of the stairs outside the temple, Wakka grabs him around the neck – AGAIN! – and drags him over to the square. What the hell is with this guy? Summoner chick is standing in the middle of the square and a bunch of people are staring at her. I would be unnerved. She’s a female RPG lead, so of course she has a staff, and she swings it around to summon a giant bird creature….with breasts. Geez, Square, does everything have to have boobs? Summoner chick pets the aeon — no, not on the boobs — and the gathered crowd murmurs in awe. Wakka and guardian chick run to the center of the square and make a big deal over summoner chick, as some badly motion-captured people do some bad motions in the background. More Wankese. “I had never seen anything like that in my life. Sure, it was a little scary, but still….I could feel a strange kind of gentleness coming from it. Plus, it had a nice rack.” The bird flies away, and the name screen pops up. Oh, so I get to name my summons here, too. Since I don’t give a rat’s ass, I leave it at the default.
Oh, God. More Wankese. Please, make it stop. “I remember…That night, we talked for the first time.” As if we couldn’t fucking figure that out. I love when the game designers think we’re stupid and try to point out Important Scenes to us. Trust me, we get it. “I didn’t know it then, but after that night, everything changed. For everyone…for me…” Because — wait for it — he ends up falling in love with her! I know, I know, you’re so surprised.
Well, Wakka would probably be the expert on that one.
Suddenly it’s nighttime, but everyone is still standing around outside. The blitzball guys are there, and Wakka introduces Tightass as “this guy here”. He lies and says that Tightass asked to join their team, instead of telling the truth – that Wakka grabbed him from behind and forced Tightass to give in to his demands. I probably wouldn’t admit that either. There’s some wanky crap with Tightass doing a victory talk or whatever the hell it’s called. As the Aurochs start chanting their new goal, “victory”, over and over and over, Tightass looks over to see summoner chick talking to some people. She looks up at him and smiles, so obviously she hasn’t spoken to him yet.
Tightass walks over to her, and the people start screaming at him for being a heathen and a bad person. I wouldn’t call him a heathen or a bad person, just a wanker. An old man tells the summoner chick to be careful, as she gets up to talk to Tightass. “But it was really my fault to begin with,” she says. Oh, please. Why the hell is she taking the blame for Tightass’s stupid actions? Oh right, she’s a woman. Everything’s her fault.